Tag: Russia

When All You Need is “Yaga,” You Better Be Ready to Fight Instead of take Flight

Halloween season has begun! And to get your early scares on, The Belfry is bringing the cross country hit, Yaga, to Victoria, BC!

Kat Sandler's Yaga Title Card
Playing at The Belfry, Victoria, BC
From Sept 14th, 2023 to Oct 8, 2023.
Tickets are available here

Please check Playwrights Canada for other regional performances.

The formula for what Kat Sandler‘s play, simply titled Yaga, is about may well be like an episode of Twin Peaks for some attendees, but for myself, I’m thinking Murder, She Wrote. But instead of solving mysteries from the perspective of a best-selling author, the point of view is from an omniscient presence needing more than the usual sustenance. Baba Yaga is an infamous Slavic witch known to eat children, but these days, she’s not picky.

Ever since this show’s debut in 2019, various theatre houses have put this play on across Canada. To kickstart Victoria, BC’s The Belfry 2023/24 season and get attendees ready for Halloween, it seems the director Jani Lauzon added an indigenous touch on top. We’re in a birch house to listen to the very beginnings of life. It’s told by a woman shaman (Tracey Nepinak) in a set that I believe was designed to resemble a traditional First Nation longhouse.

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The Details are In for The Time Guardians North American Release

The Time Guardians is a film by Alexey Telnov which will explore the past and save the future.

The Time GuardiansShout! Factory

Rekease Date:
Digital Feb 22, 2022
Home Video: Feb 22, 2022

Available to preorder on Amazon USA

A new Russian fantasy is coming to North America next year! The Time Guardians is a film by Alexey Telnov which will explore the past and save the future. This work brings the past of St. Petersburg to life in its dazzling visuals, and somewhere in the mists of time lurks creatures from myth from this world few really know about.

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Is Dzhanik Fayziev’s Cosmoball a Grand Slam?

With this Michael Bay style popcorn flick, it’s best to turn your brain off and try not to ask too many questions. This work is a sensory experience and it looks gorgeous when upscaled to 4K.

Amazon.com: Cosmoball [Blu-ray]: Viktoriya Agalakova, Svetlana Ivanova, Mikhail Efremov, Dzhanik Fayzie: Movies & TVBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Well GO USA
Available to order or stream online on Amazon USA

The Russian made film, Cosmoball is out, and will it score a home run? Technically, the game is a high tech spin of rugby, and anyone familiar with the cartoon Galactik Football to which this film is based on will recognize a few ideas.

Dzhanik Fayziev, Andrey Rubanov, Drew Row and Twister Murchison are the screenwriters of this campy science fiction superhero epic, and it’s a doozy of a tale. This work crams in three different story threads. Some of it is inspired from recognizable sources: Bloodbowl (the Games Workshop miniature battle game) mixed in with Quidditch for the sport, Farscape for the world setting and the Avengers franchise for the big bad. Cherno can be related to Thanos; he drives the plot in his desire to escape prison.

Anton (Georgiy Bestaev) is this film’s protagonist and he can teleport. He realizes his abilities after an accident and he gets recruited for this intergalactic game. The fate of his home planet is at stake, and he has to learn how to play well with others.

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Who Needs Ghosts after Halloween when there’s Sasquatch Among Wildmen?

I thought putting some focus on China and Russia would be of service to the theory of Sasquatch having relatives in that part of the world

HalloweenBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Release Date:
November 10th

Uncork’d Entertainment

Halloween isn’t over yet. Some turn that casual interest in the unknown into a lifetime career. Darcy Weir, an independent documentary filmmaker, is the supernatural explorer who prefers to chase after cryptids than the spooky. Though he grew up in a relatively normal environment, his parents always encouraged him to pursue his interests. Part of it included acting, taking part in local theatre and also working on television. He says Walter Murch is an immense influence, and it shows in the self-made DIY documentaries he made. They have a very story-driven approach. Instead of working in Hollywood, he’s producing his own ventures.

Sasquatch and the Wildman is certainly informational. Two years went into the making of this documentary, and the fact it goes to other parts of the world not as well known to explore the myths, taboos and sightings is terrific. We still have the Pacific Northwest connection, but there’s more to it than simply visiting Cougar, Washington who turned interest with this beast into a tourist type thing. Less is said about this cryptids influence in local culture and it reveals more about its purpose on this planet.

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[Fantasia 2019] On Night God and the Auteur–Adikhan Yerzhanov

HalloweenAdditional Screening
Thu Aug 01 5:30 PM
Salle J.A. De Sève

Fantasia 2019
Montreal, Quebec

Adilkhan Yerzhanov‘s Night God (Nochnoy Bog) is more than a trippy meditation about the life found in the outskirts of Russia. It’s hard to describe because the plot meanders. The film opens with a pair of workers, just having a conversation, and they see the red tails of what I feel are rockets being launched into space than falling debris–much less a comet (the latter appear as smudges in one point in the sky than wander the horizon). One individual asks, “What is the meaning of it all?”

The response is simply in the fact neither have seen anything like that in their life. They don’t even hint of knowing military exercises are going on elsewhere (the most plausible explanation of what they saw). They are more concerned about their own self being since they believe the world is ready to self destruct. Curiously, we don’t know who everyone is. They’re nameless.

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